My work often takes me to places that many would describe as remote, underserved, and difficult to reach. Yet, these are the places where I have witnessed the most extraordinary stories of courage and resilience. Over the years, it is the women from these communities who have transformed my own understanding of empowerment. Their journeys remind me that change unfolds quietly: through persistence, dignity, and countless small acts of determination.
Soon after I joined Trickle Up India Foundation, I visited one of our program locations in the Balangir district of Odisha, home to an ultra-poor tribal community. During that visit, I met Malti.
When Malti first joined the MPowered Pilot program, supported by Tata Communications, she had never used a smartphone. She was afraid of pressing the wrong button, anxious about damaging the device, and convinced that a gadget was simply “not for her.”
Years later, she had become the woman patiently teaching another participant how to send a WhatsApp voice message. It was a simple moment, but one that has stayed with me ever since. Not because Malti had learned to use a smartphone, but because somewhere along the way, fear had quietly transformed into confidence. The gadget and the tool became her own. That, to me, is what transformation looks like.
Trickle Up’s journey towards strengthening women’s digital agency began more than a decade ago through our partnership with Tata Communications. Together, we recognized that meaningful innovation requires not only implementation but also reflection and patience. We wanted to pause and learn from the women themselves—to understand how technology becomes part of everyday life, what enables that journey, and what continues to stand in its way.
For me, this reflects the true value of our partnership with Tata Communications. Some partnerships fund programs, but the most enduring partnerships also invest in learning. By creating space for reflection alongside implementation, Tata Communications has encouraged us to question assumptions, test our evolving hypothesis, and place women’s lived experiences at the center of program design.
As India celebrates the remarkable progress of the Digital India movement, I often find myself reflecting on journeys like Malti’s. For women, Digital India is much more than internet access or smartphone ownership. It represents the possibility of participating more fully in society: accessing government entitlements independently, managing finances, strengthening livelihoods, seeking healthcare, learning new skills, and making informed decisions for themselves and their families.
But a question continues to stay with me: When a rural woman has a smartphone in her hand, has she truly become digitally empowered?
Our experience at Trickle Up India Foundation tells us that it is not immediate. Over the past decade, we have walked alongside women living in some of India’s most remote communities. We have introduced smartphones, built digital literacy, and designed programs that integrate technology into livelihood interventions. And along the way, we have learned a humbling lesson: A device, by itself, changes very little.
Change begins when a woman and her community start to believe that the device has a place in her life—that it can help her solve problems, make decisions, and pursue aspirations she once thought were beyond her reach.
That belief must be nurtured, which begins with a carefully designed first digital experience that removes the fear of making mistakes. It grows through patient accompaniment by our Smart Sakhis: community coaches who come from the same villages and understand the realities women navigate every day. Women practice together, celebrate small successes, share their learning and slowly replace hesitation with confidence.
Yet the most important work towards digital agency and inclusion often happens away from the phone itself. At Trickle Up, we have discovered that digital learning cannot happen in isolation from a woman’s social reality. Every woman belongs to a family and a community that shape her opportunities, access, and choices. We must therefore invest equally in engaging families and communities. Through facilitated household dialogues, family members begin to understand and recognize the practical value of women’s digital engagement. As a result, initial resistance gradually gives way to encouragement and support.
These shifts in social behaviors are difficult to measure, but they are often the reason that change lasts long after a program concludes, when a smartphone quietly become woven into everyday life. WhatsApp groups emerge organically, not because anyone instructed women to create them, but because they discover the value of staying connected. They exchange information about government programs and healthcare awareness campaigns, discuss market prices, and celebrate milestones together.
With technology at her fingertips, a woman preparing her field can watch a short video on agricultural practices before trying something new. Another learns a better way to care for her goats after discussing symptoms with fellow farmers and calling the local veterinarian herself. A group of women compare products they have seen advertised online and decide to ask the village shopkeeper to stock better-quality sanitary napkins and household essentials that had never previously reached their market.
Perhaps the most inspiring moments are when women begin teaching one another.
It was a privilege for me to watch someone who had once hesitated to answer a phone now patiently explain digital payments to another woman. At that moment, learning no longer belongs to Trickle Up, it belongs to the community. Confidence becomes contagious, and empowerment begins to sustain itself.
That commitment to learning culminated in our recent research, Understanding Digital Agency: A Framework for Women’s Phone Use in Constrained Settings, developed by Quicksand in partnership with Trickle Up. Rather than asking what new technologies women need, the study asked a more fundamental question: How do existing technologies fit into the realities of women’s lives? We discovered that meaningful digital inclusion is shaped not only by devices or skills, but also by the everyday realities of family dynamics and social norms that influence whether a woman can truly benefit from technology.
As India continues to build a digitally connected future, we continue to believe that technology can create opportunities, but it is trust, accompaniment, community support, and confidence that enable women to turn those opportunities into lasting change. That is what we continue to work towards: digital inclusion and digital agency for women, who can do wonders with a gadget in her hand and an encouraging nudge.
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